


and always wear a straitjacket (so you're safe from yourself)

by cailures



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 20:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cailures/pseuds/cailures
Summary: We," hissed Cersei, grabbing him by the sleeve and dragging him close, "are living in squalor."





	and always wear a straitjacket (so you're safe from yourself)

**Author's Note:**

> FOR #12
> 
> Since you were hoping for Cersei and Jaime's babby, I hope you don't mind some kids in this fic, and by kids I mean goats.

We," hissed Cersei, grabbing him by the sleeve and dragging him close, "are living in squalor."  
  
They were living in a cottage in the woods, a day's ride from Casterly Rock. It was fairly clean and pleasant-smelling, possibly due to there being an outdoor latrine that was farther from the cottage than several flowering bushes and a sprawling growth of rosemary. "I'm sure if you ask nicely for a castle, you'll have it for all of three days before the new queen hears about it. There must be some of the dungeons left, under the Red Keep."  
  
"We are their lord and lady," Cersei said, and shoved him away to pace. She'd dressed in men's clothes for the journey to disguise herself. She looked completely different, but still, it reminded Jaime of Brienne. He wondered if Cersei knew; if, in some sick way, that was the point.   
  
He missed Brienne. He missed being a better man. But the important thing was that Cersei still lived.   
  
To Cersei, the most important thing was that their child still lived, and that the fire seemed to be smoking.   
  
"Moss," she said, disdainfully. "Moss! When we're surrounded by perfectly good trees!"  
  
"Which we own," said Jaime. There had, at least, been a perfectly serviceable cask of ale left for them by the kind villagers. His head ached, and so did the wounds Euron had left on him, before Cersei had made her way down the stairs and shoved a sword, inexpertly but effectively, into Euron's back. "What do you think Father would have done to a peasant who cut down one of his trees?"  
  
"But we're the rightful rulers of--"  
  
"We're fugitives," said Jaime. "And I'm going to bed."  
  
Bed was a lumpen mattress in the corner of the room. Jaime was tired enough to sleep, even with his sister roaming around the cottage and tallying the indignities. You could have surrendered, he wanted to tell her as he drifted off. Tyrion must have offered you the chance, I know he would. You could have surrendered and kept your luxury and tens of thousands of people would still be alive today. And his dreams were full of fire and blood.   
  
-  
  
When he woke, Cersei was gone. He could feel it in his bones, see it in the emptiness of the cottage. Jaime leapt from bed, intending to track her down and dissuade her from whatever mad scheme she had, or to stop her from haranguing the peasants who were all that were keeping them from being dragon food at the moment, but she wasn't far. She was in the cottage's small clearing, picking berries.   
  
"I was hungry," she said, by way of explanation. Her mouth and hands were purple.   
  
"The villagers left bread for us," said Jaime.   
  
Cersei looked up from the berries. "It's brown."  
  
Jaime tried to swallow down a reply, but his back hurt from the cottage's bed, and his head hurt from worry, worry over what his sister might do next, worry that he'd made the wrong choice. "They don't have much," he said. "They cleaned out a dead man's house and shared their bread and ale with us, and all you can do is complain about the accommodations. We don't do anything for them! We can't raise armies to protect them, or distribute the Rock's grain stores to feed them, or send out a maester to heal them. We bring nothing of worth here--"  
  
"We have money." She'd stolen a purse from a dead man in the Keep on her way out, told Jaime, quite shamelessly, that it wasn't as if the dead man had any use for it. "We can buy--"  
  
"What?" said Jaime. "Do you think they have white bread and Arbor wine to sell?"  
  
Her mouth went thin and hard. "Chickens," she said. "For eggs. And meat, when they stop laying. Perhaps a cow."  
  
No one was going to sell them a cow. "Do you even know the first thing about keeping livestock?"  
  
"They're chickens," said Cersei. "How hard can they be?"  
  
Jaime sighed. "Fine," he said. And then, "Can I have some of the berries?"  
  
She stepped aside to let him pick.   
  
-  
  
The village was a few miles out. Cersei had condescended to bathing in the stream with Jaime, for lack of a tub and hot water, and had dressed again in her shirt and trousers without a complaint. When they'd been very small, they'd worn each other's clothes and spent days pretending to be one another. Jaime didn't miss the dresses, but he had learned the basics of how to sew, and Cersei had learned the basics of swordfighting and vengeance. He didn't remember when they'd stopped, or why, but their father must have had something to do with it. Tywin would have been furious to think that all those times he thought he was teaching Jaime how to rule the Rock, he was giving lessons to Cersei, and Jaime was off in their mother's perfumed bowers, learning curtseys and courtesies.   
  
"Let me handle the negotiations," said Jaime.   
  
Cersei bristled. "Why?"  
  
"I've done this, on the road, on my way from one battle to the next. Peasants aren't exactly the Iron Bank." And she wouldn't win any friends by threatening to behead people.   
  
"Fine." She untied the purse and shoved it into his hand. "Don't forget the cheese."  
  
Jaime wandered around the village, offering pennies, and a promise to help with harvests, or loading wagons, or any simple work a one-handed man could do, in exchange for a few hens and some cheese. But the villagers seemed awkward with him, ill at ease: he'd been their lord, and the idea of treating him like a hired hand clearly troubled them.   
  
He returned to the square to find Cersei sitting on a tree stump surrounded by a group of village children. She was telling them the story of Jenny Oldstones, and they were all spellbound. It surprised Jaime, especially because Cersei was actually smiling. There was a small blond boy leaning against her leg, and on her other side a fat goat chewed weeds.   
  
"Another," the children cried when she was done, "tell us another!"  
  
She caught Jaime's eye. "Not now, but the next time I'm here, you will have more stories, I promise you." She smoothed out her tunic like it was a dress as she rose.   
  
One of the children's mothers, who'd also been listening, said, "Begging your pardon, my lady, but where did you learn such stories?"  
  
Cersei looked taken aback and Jaime tried to will her not to say, It's Your Grace. But the blond boy seemed to have put her in a good mood. "Why, from a book."  
  
"You can read?" the woman breathed.   
  
"Yes," said Cersei, bemused. "And write, and reckon."  
  
The village headman, or elder, or whatever he was, had come with Jaime, bearing the chickens, and he said, "If it's not too much trouble, could you do so for us? Only the nearest maester is at Casterly Rock."  
  
"I would be happy to," said Cersei, but her eyes were on Jaime's, as if to say she'd won that argument. She'd found something she could do for them. Something that would keep them in cheese when their coin ran out.   
  
-  
  
And it was good cheese. Cersei barely complained of it. She also didn’t complain of the goat, which had taken a liking to her, and followed them back,and pranced around the garden when Jaime was trying to work and chewed on his boots when he wasn’t. The week after next, Cersei, still dressed as a man, and Jaime, his golden hand left in the cottage in the goat’s care, rode in a wagon down to Lannisport, to fetch parchment and quills and books. It cost them some of the golden dragons from Cersei's stolen purse, but they had more, and the writing implements were worth more than gold. The villagers liked to send letters out to relatives serving in keeps and castles across the west, or even as far as Riverrun or King's Landing. The relatives couldn't read but they had access to those who could, and they did not mind how old the news was, so long as it was from home.   
  
Cersei also bought some fine cloth, threads, and needles, for the baby's clothes. Jaime found this out when they met again at their inn, and if they hadn't been surrounded by other people he'd have asked her how she planned to get away with dressing their child like a little lord, against the grays and brown homespun of the villagers. But there was news, of a sort.   
  
"The dragon queen is dead!" A man at the bar was proclaiming.   
  
"Lies!" came a call from one of the other tables.   
  
"It's the truth! They are saying so in Bitterbridge, and Grassy Vale!"  
  
Cersei's fingers tightened on Jaime's sleeve. Her eyes were hot and bright.   
  
"How'd she die, then?" the heckler demanded.   
  
"They say she was stabbed in the back by Ned Stark's bastard son."  
  
Jaime felt rather annoyed. Killing the mad Targaryens one served was _his_ fame and shame. And Danaerys hadn't even been particularly mad.   
  
"Oh, yeah?" said the heckler. "So if she's dead, who's king? They called her the mother of dragons, is a dragon now our king?"  
  
"They're saying it might be Jon Snow," said the man at the bar.   
  
Cersei snorted with laughter, such that wine shot out of her nose. She was too amused by the notion of Jon Snow as king, and too busy mopping the wine from her upper lip--and helping herself to more, Jaime noticed, probably far more than she should be drinking--to mind it much.   
  
-  
  
That night, Cersei pushed him onto the bed and straddled him.   
  
"You're drunk," he said, as his cock twitched in his trousers.   
  
She kissed him. She tasted like wine, wine, and more wine. It wasn't very good wine, but they were very good kisses. Jaime had forgotten this, in his fear and his anger and his disgust, how good Cersei could be with him, how intimately they knew each other's bodies.   
  
"You're drunk," he said again, remembering that she had sent Bronn to kill him. She had also saved his life when she saw him in battle with Euron.   
  
"So?" she said, and pulled her tunic over her head. He could see where their baby was growing inside her, pushing at the cords that tied her trousers. "The dragon queen is dead," she said, grinding down on him through their clothing, "and we are safe."  
  
"Whoever takes the throne next will want to kill us too," Jaime reminded her. She was pushing his shirt over his head, leaning down to bite at his nipple. He hissed and his hand came up to hold her head there, as her breasts brushed his belly. Her hands were undoing his trousers. It was all progressing too fast for him.   
  
His cock, however, liked the pace just fine.   
  
"Not as much as she would." Cersei shook free long enough to slip her own trousers off. She'd left his bunched around his thighs, hampering him, and he sat up to reach for her, to try to pull her back. They hadn't touched each other like this since their flight from King's Landing. In the cottage, they'd been sleeping as far apart on the large mattress as they could, and although Jaime didn't like the distance, it felt natural. He did not know if he could trust Cersei, and she--she held her grudges, and she'd nearly had him killed, twice. Even the goat was on her side: more than once, Jaime had woken up to find it curled between them, its wicked little horns too close to his stomach for comfort. He looked around for it now, but Cersei touched his face, bringing him back. "Whomever they make king won't care about us," she said. "We'll be safe. Our son will be safe."  
  
"Yes," he said. "As long as you don't laugh in crowded inns at Jon Snow's n-- Oh."  
  
"Can we not," she said, and put her hands on his chest, "talk about Jon Snow right now?"  
  
"Your wish," he said, as she began to rise back up, "my command."  
  
Cersei had this smile, half-wicked, half-self-satisfied, that she wore now, as he lay back and watched her move, watched her take pleasure from him. They'd done this before, but now, now it seemed distinctly unfair to him, so he took her right hand in his left, brought it up to his mouth, and began to kiss it. The back, the palm, the inside of the wrist--  
  
Cersei slowed, then stopped.   
  
Jaime looked up from her knuckles.   
  
"You've done this," she said, her face a pale mask of betrayal in the firelight, "with someone else."  
  
"I," began Jaime.   
  
"Brienne of Tarth."  
  
Hearing her name in Cersei's mouth hurt. Brienne had been a dream, a short space of time in which Jaime had thought he was better than he was. And he'd abandoned that, and was living on peasants' charity and his sister's skill with a pen, a knight no longer. "You slept with Lancel." And he'd had no idea, until Tyrion had told him. He'd gone on believing he and Cersei were in love, when she'd let their cousin into her bed.   
  
"I needed him to kill Robert," she said. "Don't you dare compare that to--"  
  
"And you slept with Robert--"  
  
"So he wouldn't behead me for cuckolding him." Her hands were like hot irons upon his chest and yet he was still hard inside her. "You slept with Brienne of Tarth because you wanted to, but I only slept with other men because I had to, Jaime. You're the only one," she said, leaning down on him, "the only one I've ever wanted for himself, and not for what I could get out of h--"  
  
"Are you sure?" Jaime snapped.   
  
She slapped him, hard, and his hips bucked, and he came. Hard.   
  
Cersei looked down at him in disgust, and climbed off. "I'm going to the privy," she said, wiping the inside of her thighs with a bit of blanket before gathering her clothes back up. "Don't wait for my return."  
  
-  
  
Jaime lay awake half the night. He was ashamed--of what, exactly, he was not sure. Perhaps of sleeping with Brienne. Perhaps of leaving Brienne for Cersei. Perhaps of hoping that Cersei might return to King's Landing now that she knew Danaerys was dead, and Jaime would be free to--  
  
Free to what? What was his life, if not Cersei? He'd tried to be someone different, but it had not stuck. And, if Jaime were honest, he would not have liked himself much if he'd simply abandoned Cersei because he liked himself better without her. It would have been easier, but it would not have felt right, much as telling everyone why he'd killed Aerys would have been easier. He’d had his reasons, and they’d even been good ones--but he'd still betrayed his vows and murdered his king. He was the Kingslayer, and no amount of excuses or pretty words could make that go away.   
  
Cersei was a part of him. And he loved her. And she was wrong in this, but he would not leave her, and, he found when he rolled up their belongings and went to the wagon in the morning, she would not leave him, either.   
  
-  
  
They sat in silence on the ride back. Cersei was either reading one of the books they'd bought or pretending to. Jaime watched the landscapes of his childhood roll by. There was really nothing they could say with all the other peasants from villages along the way watching them.   
  
"Did she hit you?" Cersei asked, as they were walking back from the village to their cottage. She carried her purchases, and Jaime lugged salt beef from Lannisport, and bread from the village baker's.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Brienne of Tarth." Cersei spit the name out. "Did she hit you?"  
  
"Not as much as I deserved," said Jaime. Cersei glared at him. "I said all sorts of things to her, on the road back from Riverrun, to provoke her into fighting me. She didn't. And then I nearly got the both of us killed, and she saved my life. And I repaid her by running out on her in the middle of the night and telling her what a fool she was to ever believe I could be a good man."  
  
Cersei shrugged.   
  
"It's not too much to hope for for you to tell me I'm a good man?"  
  
"Would you believe it, if I did?" countered Cersei. "Would you even want to be what my idea of a good man is?"  
  
He supposed that for her, a good man did as she told him to. Qyburn and Ser Gregor must have suited her perfectly.   
  
"I forgive you, you know," said Cersei calmly, as they came into the clearing. "Not that you necessarily want that."  
  
She'd sent a man to kill him, Jaime was about to reply, but he saw, with amazement, that the fat goat was no longer so fat. Instead, she was surrounded by several very small, very shaky goats. She eyed Jaime, decided he posed no threat to her children, and went back to nibbling on his start at a vegetable garden.   
  
-  
  
They didn't mention it: Brienne, the aborted fuck, the empty throne. Their days became routine: Jaime tended the vegetable garden, mostly carrots and turnips and beets. The chickens ate insects, and the goat, in a very self-satisfied manner, chased off any foxes or weasels that might try to eat the hens or their eggs. Jaime tried his hand at cooking, with middling success.   
  
Women from the village came. At first they were infrequent, only dropping off bread and the occasional cheese in return for the reading or writing of a letter. But then one saw the baby clothes Cersei was making, and asked, in a stammering, hesitant voice, if Cersei wouldn't mind decorating a little something for her daughter's firstborn.   
  
And then there was a trickle of village women who would sit in the cottage or the clearing and sew with Cersei, and share their stories. Jaime could see his sister's avaricious eyes as she swallowed down the knowledge, the local politics, the rumors of who was richer than he'd admit, who far poorer, whose children were fathered by a man other than her husband. Sometimes Cersei would recommend an herbal remedy that Jaime thought half-remembered from the maesters, until he saw her one night paging through one of the books she'd bought in Lannisport, with its lists of herbs, its close-written instructions.   
  
"You should kill him," Cersei told one of the women, whose husband had been beating her. Her pregnancy was now visible through her tunic, and her hair curled under her ears. Jaime looked up from where he'd been preparing a stew to see the woman lean forward, almost eagerly, and then sigh.   
  
"He is my husband," she said, "and the children aren't old enough to tend the fields on their own."  
  
Cersei looked disappointed. She handed the woman a slip of paper with some herbs. "Sprinkle a little in his ale the nights when he seems about to hit you. He will fall into a dead sleep instead, and not wake until the morning."  
  
The woman bowed. "Thank you, my lady."  
  
"Your Grace," muttered Cersei petulantly after the woman hurried off, but Jaime knew his sister and he could see she wasn't very upset. This was power, of a sort, and she loved it.   
  
And when she suddenly groaned and pitched forward one day, Jaime was at her side. "The midwife!" he yelled at the horrified village woman. "Get help!" He couldn't quite keep track of how long Cersei had been with child, but he knew from sight alone it wasn't her time.   
  
The woman, startled by his presence, scrambled down the path, nearly kicking a chicken as she went.   
  
Cersei leaned against Jaime, clutched his arms. Her head was heavy and hot, her grip brutal. "The baby," she whispered, eyes boring into his. Jaime didn't think he'd seen his sister this terrified in his entire life.   
  
It felt like another lifetime before the midwife arrived.   
  
"Well?" the midwife said, glaring at Jaime like this was his fault. "Get her on the bed."  
  
He supposed it was his fault, in a way. He got his arms around Cersei, and placed her as gently as he could on the bed. She hissed and grabbed at him again.   
  
"She's not that far along," he told the midwife. She waved him out of the way.   
  
If it weren't Cersei, he would have acted on his flare of rage. He remembered threatening to cut his way through her attendants at Joffrey's birth if they didn't let him in. But instead of raising his voice or his sword, he shuffled around the bed to kneel on the side by the wall, Cersei's hand still clutched in his.  
  
The midwife looked at him again. Jaime shook his head. He wasn't going anywhere.   
  
She shrugged, and tugged down Cersei's trousers.   
  
There was blood in them. Jaime started, stared. There was so little blood, for such pain, for a baby big enough to kick his hand when he put it on Cersei's stomach, strong enough to push at Jaime's side when he lay with Cersei at night. The midwife prodded around, asked Cersei questions. Jaime couldn't hear any of it. His own blood was in his ears. He could not, he thought. He could not.   
  
He panicked even more when his hearing came back, and Cersei was crying. Jaime started to curl around her, but then he realized--  
  
"It happens, sometimes, when a woman hasn't borne a child in a while, or when she's old." Cersei was too relieved to take offense at that, at least. "The womb is out of joint. You must take care not to jostle it; keep to your bed until the child's time has come. I'll send you one of my daughters, to help with the cooking and the cleaning."  
  
Cersei nodded. "Thank you," she said. Her hand was on her stomach, as though that alone would keep the child in. She did not, Jaime noticed, mention that he did most of the cooking and the cleaning. "We can pay--"  
  
The midwife waved her hand. "When the babe is born, I'll take two of the young goats."  
  
"Yes," said Cersei.   
  
It seemed a small price to pay for the heir to the throne, but Jaime supposed it was a matter of the woman's professional pride,, and that goats would be more use than coin. Jaime only hoped the mother goat would let them take two of her offspring away.   
  
"My daughter will be here tomorrow," the midwife said, and left.   
  
Jaime curled around Cersei on the bed. Her face was pale from pain and fatigue, and the whites of her eyes were red from crying. He didn't think he'd seen her so scared, so vulnerable, since the death of their firstborn. "That was," he began. "That was fucking terrifying."  
  
She made a quiet sound. He stroked her hair, which was long enough to reach her chin now. "I want our baby to live." She stared into his eyes. "I want our baby to live."  
  
"It will." He had no way of keeping the promise, but that was what she wanted to hear, and soon after her eyes closed. Jaime lay awake, trying not to think about the blood, and trying not to think about how, when Tyrion had been born, their own mother had died in the process. Despite everything Cersei had done, he could not countenance the thought of losing her. It had driven him south from Winterfell, and then west from King's Landing, leaking blood from his wounds, one arm over his sister's slim shoulders. She had taken his weight without complaint, and her steps had never faltered. It was a long time before Jaime could fall asleep.   
  
-  
  
The midwife sent her daughter in the morning, and a son as well. Orla was nine and Wyll five. They were dark-haired children, quiet and serious as they brought in water from the well, laid rushes, stirred the fire. While they worked, Cersei quizzed them on what was going on in the village, the neighboring villages, what they'd heard from their parents and older siblings. But she also, after a time, would read to them from one of her books. When they grew restless, Jaime plucked two straight branches, and instructed them in some of the basics of swordfighting. They were sweet children, and he felt the loss of Myrcella and Tommen with a fierce, wild ache. He never mourned Joffrey.   
  
In the third week of Cersei's enforced bedrest, Orla, while peeling beets, said, "And they say the noble houses are gathering in King's Landing to choose who will be the next king of Westeros."  
  
"Are they," said Cersei, and made no move to leave the bed.   
  
Later that night, after the children were gone, Jaime turned to her, and kissed her. "Thank you."  
  
"Don't," she said. "I didn't do it for you." But she took his hand and put on her stomach, where their child took the opportunity to kick him.   
  
"I love you too," he told the baby.   
  
-  
  
It was two long months of Cersei growing dangerously bored, sometimes refusing dinner ("I hate beets," she told him once, flinging the offending vegetable out of her bowl and towards the fire. She glared at it where it lay on the floor and then, when one of the kids ate it, she said, "I hate goats."), sometimes reading the most bloodthirsty tales she could find in her books aloud until Wyll ran from the cottage and came to Jaime in tears. Jaime had had to intervene: "Keep the atrocities of war for when it's Orla, she doesn't mind." The women who came for needlework kept their heads down, and tried to speak soothingly. The men who came for reading and writing soon learned to send their wives, with whom Cersei was marginally more patient. The cottage was never clean enough, Jaime was never attentive enough, and their first attempt at making wine from the berries outside the cottage was a disaster. She seethed, and the baby, as if sensing it, kicked more, which made Cersei even more uncomfortable and unpleasant. Jaime was at the point of drinking the terrible pulpy purple wine himself when Orla came out to the garden, where Wyll was teaching him to thin the plants and said, "Wyll, go fetch mother. It is the lady's time."  
  
She spoke so calmly that Jaime didn't realize what she'd said for several moments, and then he leapt up. "What can I--"  
  
"You'll need to fetch water from the well, to boil," she said. Of course, Jaime thought. She'd done this before. So had Jaime, but Cersei had been a queen then, with an army of attendants to boil water, and get clean linens, and--  
  
Jaime hated leaving the cottage even for the time it took him to reach the well, lower the bucket it, haul it back, and fill the kettle. He brought in a second bucket of water, just in case, and then he went back to Cersei.   
  
"How," he began.   
  
"He's strong," she said. "I can feel him, Jaime. Our son is strong, and he will live."  
  
Jaime thought of the two sons they'd already had. "Of course," he told Cersei, and kissed her hair. She smelled of sweat, and she smelled, he thought, like him.   
  
He took her hand in his. "Speaking of strength, please don't hit your midwife this time. There's only one within walking distance."  
  
Cersei barked out a laugh. "It's not my fault Robert got some idiot who babbled on about the moon and the gifts of the gods and thought the placement of the candles would bode for an auspicious birth. Gods." Her fingers spasmed around his. "Besides, you hit the midwife at Joffrey's birth."  
  
"Only because she wouldn't get out of my way." Jaime looked up and saw Orla watching them with huge dark eyes. "Don't worry, no one's going to hurt your mother."  
  
“But--” said Orla.  
  
"I give you my word,” said Cersei. “The word of a queen.”  
  
Orla bit her lip and curtsied. “Plenty of women are angry at my mother, when they’re giving birth. And you’re a queen.”  
  
Jaime was going to tell her that that wouldn't be necessary, but Cersei merely said, her nails digging into Jaime's skin, "I’ve been deposed. But if I do lose my temper, and hit your mother, and then I regain the throne, I'll execute Ser Bronn for treason and give you Highgarden by way of apology."  
  
Orla curtsied again. "I wouldn't know what to do with Highgarden, Your Grace."  
  
"Neither," Cersei gritted her teeth, "does he."  
  
Orla bit her lip again. She was only a nine-year-old peasant who'd probably never seen a castle in her life. "I'd much rather have a red dress with a golden lion on it, like the Lannister soldiers have."  
  
"She's a realist, sister," Jaime said dryly.   
  
Cersei smiled at that. "Yes, I suppose that is entirely within my power to grant. I'll even make you a matching cloak."  
  
The door creaked open then, and Jaime thought that was awfully quick of the midwife--or that the time had passed much faster than he'd realized--but it was only the goat. It looked around the cottage, and then yawned, as if to say humans were ridiculous, and it had delivered its kids without any of this fuss.   
  
-  
  
Cersei's labor lasted the rest of that day, all of that night, and some hours past sunrise. She did not hit the midwife, though she did strike a bowl of broth from her hand and threaten to destroy her if she tried to force her to take anything for the pain. "This is my pain," Cersei said, panting. "Mine."  
  
At some point Jaime was aware that his bladder was in agony, that he hadn't eaten anything since last morning's porridge, that it was terribly hot in the cottage, and that if Cersei gripped his hand any tighter he might lose that one too. For a few giddy moments he considered that, his life with no hands. And how Cersei was red in the face, and her hair gold in the firelight: Lannister colors, even in this tiny cottage. Father would be proud, he thought, and then, no, of course he wouldn't. Father had never been proud of any of his children in his entire life.   
  
So when the baby emerged, gold and red, and screamed, and after the midwife had washed her off with the hot water and clean linens, and the midwife handed her off to Cersei and the baby glared at the breast and everything around her with the utmost disapproval, it was only natural that Cersei stroked the fine hairs on her head and said, "Tywina. Her name is Tywina."  
  
-  
  
Despite her name and almost permanent air of disgruntlement, Tywina was an easy baby. Jaime remembered that Joffrey had screamed his head off at all times and all people, so he took hope from his daughter's disposition.   
  
But Cersei also seemed very restless when Tywina did not need her. Their baby was born, and she was healthy, but Jaime could almost sense his sister thinking how much safer it would be for Tywina if she were the child of a monarch, rather than an exile. She'd glance, frowning, at Tywina asleep in her woven basket, and start pacing.   
  
Orla and Wyll continued to come during the day for the first few months. The midwife had tried taking two of the young goats, but the nanny goat had menaced her with horns and bleats, and Jaime had given her one of their last dragons instead. "We can't control her," he apologized.   
  
The midwife sniffed, but gold was gold, and a Lannister always paid his debts. She could get a flock of goats with that coin anyway, so it wasn't as if it was a bad bargain.   
  
In Tywina's second month, Cersei convinced Orla to cut her hair short again.   
  
Around Tywina's fourth month, Cersei mastered the trick of making palatable wild berry wine, and her reputation and worth among the villagers grew. Jaime had to admit it was fairly good wine, but he no longer like to drink. Wine reminded him of Winterfell.   
  
A month after Tywina had been born, they'd heard that Brandon Stark had been crowned king, and that he'd named Brienne of Tarth as the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard. Cersei had been furious about the Stark boy, but when it came to Brienne she'd said, quite mildly, that she would be good at it.   
  
"Aren't you angry at her?" Jaime had asked.   
  
"Of course not," said Cersei serenely. "She could have worse taste in men. And besides, I won."  
  
It wasn't that Jaime envied his sister her clear sense of right and wrong, because he'd had it, once. Or that he envied Brienne hers. It had been being caught between the two that had been devastating. He couldn't even say, until Tywina was born, that his choice had been a good one. He'd only known that he couldn't have chosen otherwise. Even though there were a number of times when he didn't like Cersei very much--during the rants she'd gone on when learning that Tyrion was once more Hand of the King were among them--he did love her. And even though the cottage, and the woods, and the small web of villages was nothing like Casterly Rock, in some ways it felt more like home than King's Landing ever had.   
  
And perhaps that was why they let their guard down. They were near the Rock, but their parents were dead and there was no small army of retainers to look after them. No guards, unless you counted the goats. No one to warn them that there was a man coming down the path, a man they'd met in their old lives, a man who--  
  
"Hello, the cottage!" the man called cheerfully. Behind him horses' hooves thudded on the dirt path.   
  
Jaime nearly dropped his spade. He had to fumble, one-handed, to pick it up. "Hello," he said.   
  
The man's eyes alighted on his wooden hand. "It's not true, then," he said. He sounded disappointed.   
  
"What's not true?" The man sold horses in the west, had been a frequent visitor at Casterly Rock for decades. Jaime and Cersei hadn't spent much time at the Rock since they were young, but they'd been back with the whole court a few times. Jaime had bought a pony from the man for Myrcella's fourth name day. It had been quite a beautiful pony and she'd squealed with delight and hugged him. "Thank you, uncle Jaime!" she'd said.   
  
"They said there was a man here who could read and write," the horse merchant said, and Jaime took a moment to bless the villagers for hiding Cersei like that, in plain sight.   
  
"Yes, he's inside."  
  
The merchant laughed as he followed Jaime to the cottage. "Of course, they also said there was a witch living out here."  
  
"You know how gossip can spread," said Jaime, and then, in a louder voice to carry into the cottage, "My brother, who reads and writes, can't speak. Lord Tywin removed his tongue when he was a child for slandering the name of House Lannister." He thought about Ser Ilyn Payne, about how Cersei had probably said things that would have lost her her tongue if she'd been a peasant. How she still did. "He was going to be a maester, but after that...."  
  
"My gain," said the merchant. Jaime looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but Cersei was already rising. Tywina was out of sight in her basket, thankfully asleep. "A speechless maester is much better than the witch they said lived here."  
  
Cersei raised an eyebrow. Jaime, who was well-versed in his sister's looks, grimaced.   
  
"Just," said Jaime, "let him know, if you need anything written. I was also being raised as a maester, so I can read, but--" He shook the sleeve off his stump.   
  
The merchant whistled. "What did the two of you do to earn old Tywin Lannister's wrath?" he asked, chuckling.   
  
Jaime smiled thinly. "Where do I begin?"  
  
The merchant wanted a list of the horses he was bringing east, and the prices he expected to get for them. One in clean hand on a small enough scrap for a raven, for his factor in King's Landing, and the second larger, for the use of his bank. He prattled on about it being a good year, about the fashions at court these days, Brandon Stark's odd saddles and the breeds of horses that best bore them.   
  
All the while, Cersei's eyes were bright, and Jaime could tell her mind was far from the merchant's horses. Something he'd said--King's Landing, or Tyrion's designs, or even the gossip about Bronn--had struck her interest, and she was worrying at it, like a lion with a lamb.   
  
"That will be two silver stags," Jaime said, as Cersei rolled up the scrolls. The merchant paid happily, and as Jaime was seeing him out, there was a noise--Tywina waking, crying, Jaime thought.   
  
The merchant began to turn. "What was that?"  
  
"Goats," said Jaime, and all seven of them took that moment to strike up bleating. The merchant stared at them bemused, and the nanny goat tried to run him off with her horns.   
  
"Spoken too soon!" said the merchant, as he hurried away. "This goat of yours is a beast possessed!"  
  
"Good goat," said Jaime.   
  
The goat butted him--but with head, not horns, and Jaime left it with a sinking heart to return inside to whatever Cersei was plotting.   
  
She'd picked Tywina up and was holding her tight. Tywina wasn't crying, wasn't grumbling, was cooing happily up at Cersei for once.   
  
"Cersei?"  
  
"You heard him," she said, and did not look at him.   
  
"I couldn't help it," said Jaime, sitting warily on the table. "He wouldn't stop talking." There was trouble in the line of Cersei's back. He wasn't afraid of her, in that moment, but afraid for her. "But I don't know which of his blatherings you mean."  
  
Cersei was staring down at the golden fuzz of Tywina's hair. "I'm the witch," she said. "Me. I'm the witch, and I make my own future."  
  
Jaime was still lost. "And?"  
  
She shut her eyes. "I want our baby to live," she said, and he went to her, and embraced her, because he didn't know what else to do. "I want our baby to live."


End file.
